Writing Books

I read other books. I'm currently learning Arabic and doing a course on advanced nursing and I still find time to read fiction and write what I laughingly call stories.

I do like a good book on writing though. You will remember my recent obsession with plotting. I am reading Writing the Breakout Novel: Winning Advice from a Top Agent and His Best-selling Client

and also Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Second Edition: How to Edit Yourself Into Print

I found these from Plot and Structure: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting a Plot that Grips Readers from Start to Finish (Write Great Fiction)

I like the self editing book. But it's focused on 'wordsmithery' not plotting. Is this a bad thing? No. Good.

I always liked the wordsmithery aspect of writing, having read too many literary novels that went on about nothing much but were written like a dream. I was an aspiring poet once, let's not forget. But, when I check which books are outselling mine on Amazon, in the same categories (yes there are some), I find that within the first paragraph they have committed cardinal sins against wordsmithery - beginning with three paragraphs of narrative exposition for example. And they still outsell! The reason they outsell, IMHO, is that they are good stories. They may be poorly edited and have a multitude of other failings, but if they have a good story, people can't put them down.

That don't mean I'm going to give up trying to write nice tho.

Something New For Me

Lamia, or the Dark Tower

Drostan mab Lear, bard, wanderer and ladies' man, leaves the castle of his married lover before dawn and takes the road through the haunted forest of Brocéliande. In his arrogance, he boasts that he will meet and tame the evil dark lady of the forest because "she's only a woman…" 

She entraps him in the dark woods and brings him to her tower. There, fully in her power, she tells him she will keep him alive as long as his musical talent and lovemaking entertain her. She begins to bend him to her will. He says he will never love her. And then she makes him an offer... 

Moral Satisfaction - Dwight Swain and John Yorke

Still reading Dwight V Swain Techniques of the Selling Writer. When he's talking about a satisfying story resolution he says that the reader wants the focal character either rewarded or punished because of he deals with the moral theme of the story (I paraphrase). He talks about the choice a character has between what is expedient and what is morally right. So, the character faces a dilemma between the fast buck and the long righteous walk. If he chooses the fast buck then the reader is satisfied when he does not achieve his desire. If he takes the heroic but morally right choice, then the reader wants him to be rewarded.

On page 191, he talks how you show the action of the FC in dealing with his dilemma: no need for words, just show him doing the right (or wrong thing). He also says

"...you can fool the world, and sometimes you can even fool yourself. But you can't fool your own feelings. They tell the truth about you, every time, without regard for rationalizations or excuses.

That's why climax is so vital. Only as we see a man in crisis, when under stress he acts on feeling, can we gain the final, conclusive proof we need to determine whether or not he deserves the goal he seeks." 

Now, Dwight can come over as old-fashioned in wanting stories where the good guy is rewarded for being good. But what he says about a person acting on feelings and thus displaying what he/she really echoes something that I read in John Yorke's book Into The Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them

This was only published in 2013. On p. 127, Yorke says:

"The conflict between how we wish to be perceived and how we really feel is at the root of all character." 

Yorke says, in this book, that the whole character arc is the person's journey from portraying the false image of how they want to be perceived to being how they really are at the end. Just the same as Swain!

Yorke talks about a character's wants and needs. What he wants is related to his facade, or as Jung would say, his Persona. What he needs  is related to his Self (in Jungian terms again).

Based on what Swain said - what the character needs is to serve moral rectitude. And both writers talk about the importance of the story to humans being that it portrays order against the chaos and unpredictability of the Universe.

Someone else said, A kiss may not be the truth - but it's what we wish were true.

So go and kiss someone. Or not. But if you do, please obtain their consent beforehand.

Dwight V. Swain and Me

You will be familiar with my ongoing fascination with the wisdom of writing gurus who want to help you write better. First it was Blake Snyder, then John Yorke then I listened to the words of Michael Moorcock and Lester Dent. My latest find is Dwight V. Swain. I like his gnarly voice on the podcast I listened to. Gnarly has a different meaning in American I'm aware because one of the reviews for my stories said it was 'gnarly'. I think that was good. Yep, I've checked - it is good, and doesn't mean covered in knobs (well it does sometimes.

So, I am reading Dwight V. Swain at the moment. There are some very useful blogs about his technique. Check out Phillip McColllum's blog entry on Scene and Sequel  but also Katie Ganshert's post on "Motivation-Reaction Units".

I love a bit of jargon.

So I went over The Beast of Whitby and tried to get my Motivation/Reaction Unit in place and arrange them in Scenes and Sequels.

The benefit of this for me was that Blake Snyder and John Yorke and also Christopher Vogler (to a lesser extent) gave an overarching story structure. Yorke makes the point that Acts and Scenes are fractal - so that they should mirror the overall story arc.  Swain tells you exactly how to do that.

So, you have (Inciting incident) -> reaction -> dilemma -> decision -> goal -> conflict -> disaster.

And you repeat it. So each scene has that form, and each act has that form and the whole story is built from those bricks. This works well with John Yorke's idea of a five act structure being implicit in all stories.

I don't buy that every story is the Hero's Journey however, though I like Joseph Campbell a lot. There are lots of archetypal experiences that light us up - Leaving Home, Finding a Mate, Facing Death, Being Predated, Finding our Place in the Tribe's Pecking Order, Raising Young.

I don't know why I've given them all capital letters...

Peace dudes - be gnarly!

TW.

The Beast of Whitby

I wrote a new story! But I also repackaged The Exorcist and The Golem. I've taken the individual stories off the market because they weren't selling much. That's despite me thinking they're not bad stories - I really like the characters Adam Meyrink and Midnight Blue.

My alter ego (a lady) did this with some of her racy stories and repackaged them with a new title and a new cover. She took the old ones off the market as it wouldn't do to disappoint people who thought they were buying new raciness and had already got the previous titles. This worked pretty well. Not stellarly, but well.

Anyway here's the contents of The Beast Of Whitby: 3 Stories of the Supernatural

The Beast of Whitby

"Adam Meyrink, intellectual by nature, loner by inclination and  supernatural problem solver to earn a living, takes a missing person job from a grieving girlfriend. He finds the missing man alive and well in Whitby, Yorkshire, but the ex boyfriend doesn't want to rekindle his old love. It turns out he has made new friends and developed other interests of the black magic kind. Job done, Adam is about to leave town but the man's occultist friends want to make trouble for him.  He knows he should walk away, but Adam's not the kind of man who can bend his principles and he never turns his back on trouble. "

The Exorcist

 Dr John Eliot inherits a clock and disturbing things start to happen in his house. His daughter sleeps alone upstairs and something wants to get her. Dr Eliot thought there was a rational explanation for everything, but when his family is at threatened, he knows he has to go beyond science to protect them. In his desperation he turns to Adam Meyrink

The Golem

Now in Prague, pursuing is mysterious research, English occultist, Adam Meyrink wants to make psychic contact with long dead Dr John Dee and Edward Kelley.  Going about his business, he upsets the wrong people and they draw him into their plots and unleash a monstrous creature of clay whose only mission is to kill him. 

Lester Dent and Me

So this one was in response to people saying my previous ghost stories weren't scary enough. By that some of them clearly meant weren't horrible enough in a gory sense. I thought I'd write one that was, but of course you can be the judge of whether I succeeded. I was aware that this is a Monster in The House story, using Blake Snyder's genre typing. The main rule is "don't get eaten" which has an ironical meaning in this story. If you are familiar with Snyder's ideas, this genre is typified by someone being in a place they can't get out of due to physical or other impediments and a monster has been created by their "sin". They have to face their sin to resolve the issue.

I also wanted to try out Lester Dent's method for writing short stories. This is based on four parts each 1500 words each. I went over this word count in the rewrite by about a third, but I thought that was forgivable. +Karen Woodward  discusses this very usefully on her blog.  Dent was writing pulp action fiction so his is all about murders and fist fights. Clearly that wasn't going to work in a horror story where you don't want the monster to appear until much later, if at all - creating the atmosphere by hints rather than revelations. (Do revelations ever create atmosphere?). I also wanted to avoid laying too much pipe as Blake Snyder says - I didn't want much exposition at all. When I'd finished I found that I needed a little bit more.

I was also aware of +Michael Moorcock 's advice about dropping little bits of mystery in - even if you're not actually going to explain them at the end, though I think it all becomes clear. 

So, I did all that to the plan and I finished a story that I was 50% satisfied with. I wondered whether that was because it just wasn't tense enough to anyone, or it wasn't tense enough to me because unlike when I pantsed stories before, the story itself was a surprise to me and therefore tantalising or scary to me, I knew the bones of this one and so maybe it was too clinical?

I don't know. I'll wait for the reviews. My kids liked it anyway, but maybe they just wanted to sweeten me up so I gave them money?

Tony

Scrivener Update Windows Error

Tried to update Scrivener but I got an error message:

"Installation and runtime mismatch"

Said that where I had installed Scrivener and where it was running from were different so it couldn't update. But of course it was making a mistake. Hoping this link will fix it.

A Mixed Bag

As time goes on and I get more reviews I realize what a mixed bag they are (I just spelled realize American so that somebody doesn't go "grammatical error!" on my ass (or arse). It's not even grammar it's spelling but it does seem to vex people. Some people go 'Wow! Brilliant!" and someone else says it's dire. I'm getting more ducklike with the water of criticism.

Someone left a review that went on a bit in a wordy, self regarding snarky sort of manner that said something like .... "There was the bones (sic) of a good haunting... of grammar - there was none, and much missed by it's (sic) absence."  Misused 'it's' for 'its' twice and had a disagreement about number with his verb then he criticizes me for bad grammar. I was so tempted to respond but I didn't.

I have a hangover this morning from being at a wedding last night and I am listening to Rush from way back. Great pleasure with a cup of tea. Bit too windy to go for a mountain walk in case I get blowed off (note my ironical mistake with the participle there).

I plan to trawl through old copies of the Parasychological Review for ideas. I was reading some good blogs about Lester Dent's method of writing short stories as exposited here by +Karen Woodward and then leading onto the Michael Moorcock method of writing adventure books in 3 days. Again herewith set out by +Ghostwoods Books  here - no here. Old Mr Moorcock's article appears elsewhere but this is the prettiest blog version. It even made me start reading the Corum books which is just as fun as it was. (You think I'm giving a plural subject a singular verb? No! 'it' here refers to fun. Haha! Gotcha!). I'm also reading Vogler's Writer's Journey Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. I'm a long time fan of Jung and Campbell and I have actually read the Mysterium Coniunctionis - like twice - meaning I have known for a long time the secret of existence. I can also read the Latin too, decipher the Hebrew and have a good go at the Greek. So Mr bad review, stick that up your arse and smoke it. You fucking little cocksucking cunt.   Not that I'm bothered as I mentioned before. To me it's like a water/duck/back equation.

Of course I realise (see what I did?) that expositerize is not a real word but I can make words up here. I can do what the f*** I want with words on this blag (deliberate mistake too - very witty too I thought) because no one reads it!!! Haha! I win again!!

Of course I can't bring myself to write fuck  I have to write f*** instead, but that's my choice. And it's valid. That reminds me of a discussion I had with me (ex) wife (note the ex) where she said "Everyone is entitled to an opinion." and I countered. "Not if they're wrong..."

Not that I am. I'm off now to be ill.

Gothic story Vivien - FREE today

FREE TODAY and for the next few days on Amazon!

US link here

Arrogant war hero, Captain William Thorpe crashes his car in the remote Scottish Highlands. He is rescued and taken to the mysterious and secluded Dungarvan Castle. When he recovers consciousness, he looks up at a sea of faces and sees the beautiful woman he is told is his wife. His desire for Vivien is only matched by his horror as he slowly realizes she is the voracious thing that haunts him and that he must defeat.

Set in 1925 in a beautiful Scottish castle troubled by a beautiful dark haired woman, the story is reminiscent of Daphne De Maurier's Rebecca and Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla. This is no horror schlock ghost story filled with pointless gore, instead it aims to entertain and hopefully entrance with its moods and atmospheres and the emotional journey of the main characters.

Check out the FREE sample provided by Amazon. Or go straight to the buy button! It's your choice.

Enjoy!

Sorry about this blatantly promotional post. I promise I will write soon about my experiences with rogue kittens. It's been hell.

New Story - A Gothic Romance

The latest product from the late night sweat and beer factory (sounds nasty when you put it like that)

Arrogant war hero, Captain William Thorpe crashes his car in the remote Scottish Highlands. He is rescued and taken to the mysterious and remote Dungarvan Castle. When he recovers consciousness, he looks up at a sea of faces and sees the beautiful woman he is told is his wife. His desire for Vivien is only matched by his horror as he slowly realizes she is the voracious thing that haunts him and that he must defeat.

Helpful

This week I have been mostly writing and walking up mountains. I read John Yorke's book Into the Woods. Again like Blake Synder, these are not primarily for novels/short stories but what they say about the structure of stories is applicable to all forms of storytelling

You may know that I have been interested in in Carl Jung's ideas for at least twenty years and Yorke references Jung through Joseph Campbell. There are certain things that are common to all cultures at all times and these are language, music and storytelling. We tell stories because we have to - they are like birdsong is to blackbirds, hard wired because they perform some archetypal purpose.

I think I have neglected structure up until now, but pop songs are crafted onto a recognisable structure as is most painting. So it's seems obvious that stories are and that they are more satisfying when they obey the rules of story structures. 

So that's what I'm doing now. Time will tell if people respond positively to the stuff I produce that pays much more attention to structure.

Laters.

The Golem - my latest story.

The weather in Prague was so cold they could hardly bear to be outside. Adam Meyrink, the occultist, and his companion, the psychic Midnight Blue, stood in the Old Town Square watching the Christmas Market. Meyrink's mind was far away but Blue was entranced by the city - the lights, the brightly decorated stalls and the falling snow. The city looked like a magic snow globe and trade was booming on the Carousel and people bustled round the stalls selling Czech mulled wine - svařák. To go with their wine or their beer, the crowds bought sausages with mustard and sauerkraut, tinsel, candles and sparkling lights.

"You know they call Prague the magic capital of Europe - the City of Alchemists," said Meyrink. He would have gone on, but Blue said, "We need to get inside somewhere. I've lost the feeling in my toes."

What's left to say? Click the click.

British English is Wrong for American Readers

Just a short note on my observations. After getting various reviews from American readers that the stuff I'd written was full of "grammatical" and "syntax" errors, I took a close look. Notice they didn't say "spelling" errors. But when I looked, I couldn't find any errors of grammar. I even ran the text through Word's grammar checker and that picks us some weird and wonderful things, but not here.

Kinder reviewers were pointing out that the author was British and that his use of English would differ from what Americans are used to.

I guess that because of movies like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, many Americans are very used to standard British English in its spoken form. And when I've been in the States apart from a very few times, I don't have a problem being understood. When people say "Excuse me?" in the USA they mean "I didn't hear / understand what you said," not "please get out of my way" like it normally means in British English where "I didn't hear/understand what you said," is normally "Pardon?"

Despite their familiarity with spoken British English, I made the mistake of presuming that the average reader (not the New York Anglophile who only reads the work of Evelyn Waugh and his son Auberon) is familiar with British spelling, at least to the extent that they would go "Ah! That's the British spelling." But no, they just think it's wrong.

So now I write color and harbor and realize and sympathize and I smolder rather than smoulder.  British readers readily recognize the American spelling (see what I did there?) so why give American readers grief?

I think to grief means something different in the States too. I certainly know skit does.

Pantsing

I have just finished another story. Let me just get a link in here.

I think it was the hardest story that I've ever written. I had a few scenes in mind and I had the main characters in mind - Adam Meyrink and Midnight Blue - and I had the city in mind - Prague. But, it was the devil's own work to get the thing to come together. I felt like a butcher carving up a carcass and then realising I'd done it wrong. Maybe more like a person making a patchwork quilt, looking the the squares and thinking, 'nope'. But I have finally beaten it into shape, I think.

The shape is helped by Blake Snyder's 15 beat structure and the genre. I have written it like a Whydunnit? However I started pantsing it (as you can tell) and ended up plotting it. I wonder if you can see the stitchwork? Is it as obviously sewn together as Boris Karloff in Frankenstein I wonder?

Take a look and let me know.

Changed my Biog

This is my new one. Do I come over as a dick? Be honest! I'll change it if I do.

When I wrote my first novel aged 21, I thought that would be it: sit back and begin the career, but it didn't happen like that. I had to work for a living! But on the plus side, that has given me lots of material. I have been a waiter, a drummer in a punk band, a linguist, an intelligence officer. I've worked with birds of prey in Wales, London Underground in London (in London? really?) British Coal overground not underground. I've been a student more times than I care to remember. I've run historical, music, matchmaking (yep) and pirate events. I was the leader of a ghost tour company for a number of years. I've been a nurse and that has given me lots of enriching experiences that most people don't get (they're probably glad!)

I love words and languages, places and people and I'm fascinated by philosophy and psychology and magic. I studied all of these and they will be evident if you read what I write.

Hard lessons learned in writing - don't give up! It's a craft as much as an art and you have to learn it (I still am). There are kind and generous people who will help you with their words of support, but there are also people who with a n off-the-cuff put down sentence can ruin your day - your week and maybe your month.

As Eliot said,

Fare forward, travelers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus.

All you have is now; enjoy it.

Here's the new cover. I think it's better.

Beats

I've heard of beats before, mainly from 'Write, Publish, Repeat' by +Sean Platt  and +Johnny B. Truant which I would very heartily recommend.

 

I'm also familiar with story arcs etc, but kinda pantsed most things. I quite enjoyed the feeling that things would just emerge from your characters and the situations you were in. However, with the story I'm writing at the moment, I got stuck.  I must admit I did take on the criticisms of my one star review (have I mentioned that before?) that the story lacked direction.

So I found Save the Cat by the late Blake Snyder.



I have gone back through my current story and revised it in line with Blake Synder's suggestions and I think it has improved it. There is a lot of discussion of beats out there. I have enjoyed +Jami Gold 's blog and she usefully discusses whether beats lead to formulaic writing. That's here.  Massively useful to me as someone who barely understands, but loves what he knows of Excel spreadsheets - are the spreadsheets she uses to give your story its shape and length. Maybe not for you, but I like 'em. They are here

More good words on Blake Snyder's beats by +Tim Stout here and by Pitr here

On a personal level, I have had some lovely emails and some great reviews for the Haunting which made me feel a whole lot better.

I also messed with the cover for the Exorcist which I think is now a whole lot better, though it isn't showing up yet on Amazon unless you buy the story.

Anyway, it's sunnyish here now and I am going to get my slumbering teenagers up and make them walk up a a hill. I am prepared for defeat.

Mysteriouser

Well I continue to struggle and travail (not sure if you can use that as a verb in English) with reviews and writing. One of my books is doing enormously well - 1375 (free) copies out since 1st April. We'll see if it continues to sell after it goes to 99 cents.

Regarding the Haunting - I have had 2 positive reviews on US Amazon. One looks like it's a put up because it's so good, but it wasn't. On Goodreads the ratings have been pretty ok 5stars, 4stars, 1 3 star. But on UK Amazon I got a 1 star (I think I mentioned this) and that gutted. Then yesterday I got a really awful 1 star. The book has now gone free even though it's not free anywhere else - because someone ratted on me that I had a free promotion on Smashwords. Idc about that. So this woman (I suspect it might be the same woman...) wrote a terribly horrible review. Given it's free she couldn't even say "don't waste your money" but resorted to "don't waste your time". The review is entitled Don't Bother!  I don't think I deserve that.

This is a hard game to play. If anyone loves me I'd be grateful for a positive review on UK Amazon for the Haunting; that is if you feel you can. If you can't, just email me and break it to me how bad it really is.

Weirdly I look at the good reviews, am pleased, but they don't go in. I say "it's just because the people are nice" -  I only believe the bad reviews, though I think the people are nasty! I wouldn't just trash someone. I've read some bad stuff, but I just leave it and move on.

Anyway, yous all have a great day.

Tony

Sales this month

So, we're nearly at the end of March.

Before the Kybosh was put on sales of The Haunting in the UK (and bizarrely Australia) it was selling well. The total figures for March are

Paid:

USA - 262
UK - 194

Free
UK 197
Australia ! 5

In total - 656 copies gone out this month and about 200 last month.  That's quite good.

I got a one star rating as you know, but I've had two people email me to say it was fantastic. Who knows, I'm just glad they liked it.

Zventibold! Complete!

Here learn the tribulations of the boy-child Zventibold - how he rose from the grimy rags of his bastard birth to fight against injustice but how he was thrown down. How he turned to sorcery and raised the dead; how eventually he led an army of hamster men and kangaroo boxers to wreak vengeance upon his enemies. But there is more inside. Much more. 

Father murdered 
Step father murdered
Himself exiled
Only love ravished by his sworn enemy

Can he win her back?
Can right prevail?

Download this tale now. Every download helps good defeat evil.

Healthy Times - Hard Times

Went for a walk yesterday - here's some pictures:

I wanted to post these to say how much better I feel when I'm getting some fresh air. That and being Mindful. When I'm doing both of those things, the world is good. I learn to let go of things that bother me - like the 1 Star Review. In fact that's hardly on my mind at all now.

Funnily enough, I was reminded of it yesterday when I came home from my walk. After The Haunting

Stopped selling in the UK, I decided to make it free. This is what I'd always intended for this story anyway but when it started selling well, I thought I'd postpone the freeness thing. So I changed the price on Smashwords to free. Now, you should have to let Amazon know there's a cheaper price, but someone did it for me...

Does Amazon have a set of robots that search this stuff out, or as the helpful person who gave me my 1 star review done it to try and scupper me further.

Paranoid? Hmmm.

But since it became free about 16 hours ago it's shipped 60 copies so it's getting into peoples' hands and my hope is that someone will write a better review. Of course they might write more shit ones then I'll have to jump off the ridge featured above.

Not really. I'll not be ground down like pepper.

The Exorcist - My New Story

Here it is. Fresh meat. 

Laurent Binet: HHHH

Loved this book. It reads like a blog about someone writing a historical novel about the assassination of Heydrich in Prague. As such we have the writer's musings about what he should put in and some hints at his personal life - the mysterious Natacha for example. I enjoyed that "meta-novel" but I quite like quirky post-modern stuff. Binet calls it an Infranovel (in the Eng. translation anyway). The best bits are about the story of the heroic Czech resistance and the gut wrenching vileness of the Nazis. I will admit that I wept.

And guess what? He's got some 1 star reviews.

Moaning isn't attractive at all

Whining, moaning, complaining - that's not me.

Did I say about the one star review? It has totally killed sales in the UK.  And, it's unfair. I mean - "no direction" and "predictable" - you either don't know where you're going or you do.

I'm listening to Hawkwind so that makes me feel better. Also I think I have a bone in my mouth. This is probably good you're thinking - otherwise my mouth would be floppy and I couldn't eat. I had my tooth extracted the other day and they had to drill into the jaw. I think a fleck of bone is working its way out. They had to file the jaw bone smooth too so that maybe did it. Anyway the surgeon said I had a high pain threshold. I wish I'd taken that career as a bare knuckle fighter up now.

My daughter says I should get a tattoo 'cause I'd obviously laugh the needle off. But what kind of tattoo?

I know - I'll get that f****** one star review tattooed on my arse.

Falling like a stone...

So, this month up until the 1 star review (hiss, boo) The Haunting Sold 350 copies, and then after that, nothing. Dead in the water. I weep. I cry, but what can I do but write a better story?

So I am.

But that isn't why I wanted to blog tonight. I was discussing how our house would be quite good against a zombie apocalypse. It is part of a courtyard. At the top end there is a door onto the main street that you wouldn't know was there from the other side. Good. Zombies are unobservant and stupid. The other side there is a gateway for cars which is locked with iron gates and a car. My daughter said we could park the car against it and we'd keep them out for ages. We also have a secret room. Nuff said about that.

But then she said, "and we're close to the river and zombies can't swim...."

Bingo!  Of course they can't. Stupid, slow things that move with a total lack of coordination. How are they going to cross a river? How come no zombie series has thought of this before? How come the Walking Dead heroes didn't just blow the bridges???

The relief I am feeling now, is enormous. Just need to figure out how to keep the werewolves out and I will sleep easily for the first time in years.

1 Star Review

Just got my first one star review for The Haunting. Ouch. I even dreamed I was before a committee of wise old men who agreed to write me some positive reviews to balance it. Let's see if they keep their dream word.

What's worse is that it's the first review it's had. It starts off: "The story was well written, but..."  I don't agree with what she says (naturally), but what do you do about this? I guess you just have to move on. Maybe she's right? I should say that on Goodreads the same story got 4 stars. So there.

Ghost stories are tropes - the ones that do well such as the Blair Witch and Amityville get their buzz from claiming to be true, which they aren't.

The classics use the same themes over and over.  I watched the Tractate Middoth at Christmas which was really beautifully done, but still full of tropes - ancient manuscript, wicked necromancer, etc. I also read 3 Winter Ghosts by Gary Sargent recently and that was very well written but again, supernatural murderer etc.

(can't resist a plug)

But that isn't the issue here, it's my insecurity and wondering whether they are really shit...

Now when I write something truly original such as Zventibold! no one buys it!

Here's that link again.... 

:)

God loves a trier they say.

Amazon Ranking...

Hey, yesterday I was 16,890 in the Amazon Author Ranking. Today it is nosediving in the mid 20,000s. Yesterday I imagined myself the 16000th (I'm ignoring the 890) best selling author on Amazon. That is about twice the size of the town I live in at the moment, so it's like everyone I meet in town is a better selling author than me. And that includes the butcher and the Lollipop Lady at the school and Mad John.

Sobering.

Swapping Reviews

I've used Amazon's free book offer time with several of mine over the past couple of months. When I do that I tend to post a link to it on several of Facebook's "Free Book" groups. I think it helps. I get nice thumbs up messages from people and likes so it's good for morale if nothing else.

It also spawns offers to trade reviews. So typically I'll get a message or two from people I don't know who say that they have a free book and that they will write me a review if I will write them one. I have done this twice I think. At first I was naive, but then I began to think something fishy was going on.

These Facebook profiles usually have an attractive young woman, occasionally a man, as the avatar picture. When you click through most of them can't be viewed and have no history. This could be because of their privacy settings but I wonder whether it isn't because they are created specially for the purpose of promoting ebooks. Often the messages are written in an English that suggests that the writer isn't a native speaker or has mastered the language (no crime in that) but the books themselves are written in good English.

When you look at the books the author's name is not the name of the person on FB who has messaged you. And the books are always How To books. I've been asked to do reviews on How to Sing, How to Detox from Sugar, How to Meditate. Others have been recipe books about Paeleo diets and Smoothies.

They are rarely longer than 25 pages long and they say they normally retail for 5.99. For 24 pages? The content is usually grammatical and well written and with a broad brush approach - pretty much stuff that could be gleaned from the Internet.

When I queried one of the lovely young women who contacted me that her name wasn't the same as that on the book, she said that was understandable as she was merely a "Virtual Assistant". Does that mean she wasn't real at all?

I think that these books are of little real worth though they aren't bad as a general introduction or a basic source of recipes but I wonder whether you taint yourself with the 'infotrash' label if you exchange reviews with them.

While writing an honest review of a book can't be bad practice, I wonder what Amazon thinks about people spewing out hundreds of infotitles - recipes and how to books? Often the author claims to be a doctor or highly qualified nutritionist, but I have no way of easily checking these claims - my hunch is that they are fake authors with fake credentials ghost written by professional writers who regurgitate websites.

Zventibold!

I have just published the first installment of Zventibold! an epic fantasy comedy tragedy which I wrote way back when I was at University. I thought it was immensely funny at the time, as did my friends. (I think they really did)

I have uploaded the first 20,000 words as part of a serialisation. The rest is written but I wanted to see how Zventibold! (1) went. So far it is on free download and it isn't doing great. This is my experience with Desperate! (1) which was also humour and which also didn't work.

Funnily enough, I think Zventibold has the pzaz (sp - I know but I prefer my spelling tbh) to eventually become a cult classic. I hope to see that happen in my lifetime.

Here it is:

If you do download it, can you do me a review?

Remember this is the beginning of a cult: the cult of Zventibold!

Stories

I continue to marvel at how my story The Haunting is selling so well - 145 copies in 10 days. That's the most I've ever sold since I started this business. Some of my other little collections give three stories for the same price, but for some reason they don't sell a fraction of The Haunting. Is it the cover? Is it the description?

My fear is that I can't replicate this with another story as I don't really know why it's been so relatively successful. It can't be reviews because it doesn't have any so far.

So I wondered whether it was the fact that the title is a common one - you can't copyright a title so you can call your stories anything. I didn't do this on purpose with The Haunting, but maybe it has helped that there are loads of other stories/films etc, called The Haunting or the Haunting of...

So, I'm writing a story called The Exorcist. I want to introduce a character called Adam Meyrink who is a Chaos Magician and who is the only one who can exorcise the thing...

"Little Brother, you've been meddling with the Goetia" as Allen Bennett said to Aleister Crowley...

I'm quite enjoying writing it but as I sit here all on my own typing away in this quiet, empty house, I am getting a bit scared.

Moving House

I have moved house since the last post which explains my silence. All done now, mostly, still waiting for some mattresses to be delivered. Maybe today, maybe who knows?

Yesterday, another mattress was delivered (mattresses are big with me) and I got a text from the delivery company. I wanted to phone them to say I wasn't in but I couldn't do that. But what I could do was watch a great little  map on my phone which showed how my delivery driver Jim was edging closer and closer and all the time I'm wanting to yell "Jim! Don't waste your time - I'm not in!" But my yelling went in vain and Jim didn't know. I did send them an email which promised that it would be dealt with in three working days. That was no good for Jim.

In my youth we just used to phone people to arrange things. It was much simpler.

But anyway, by the end of February I sold 191 books.

This month so far (it's 8th March) I've sold 130 but the bulk of those - 100 to date - is

See how I did that plug? Subtle.

This is great. But I wish someone would give it a good review. It has one good review on Goodreads which again is fantastic.

I need to get back to writing now.

Pinterest

I joined Pinterest over a year ago but I never really bothered with it. I had my Tumblr account to collect my pretties which is here and I have collected very many pretties over the years, so I didn't see the need for Pinterest.

However +Angela Booth in her fantastically helpful blog here says that it is the marketing tool for indie publishers. She says that you should be marketing things with images.  She gives the example of how a writer called Vic Sandborn created a Pinterest board, or boards, that made people who were interested in the world of Jane Austen come to her, and how then this became a powerful tool for Vic to market her writing.

I can see that. I suppose it's helpful if you fix your genre or writing subject and then create your board based on that. I have tried to do this for the Moberly book I've just reissued.

Check out the board - here

But I think I have some way to go.

Here's a link to The Adventure. Currently FREE!  Get it now! But it's your choice, dude.

Here some quotes of how people felt when experiencing these timeslip type occurrences

1941: South West England -

"They both felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding or evil as they climbed hedge after hedge, always dropping down into ploughed fields with no gateways."

Source: http://www.assap.ac.uk/newsite/articles/Time%20slip.html

1957: Kersey, Suffolk, England

"the general feeling certainly was one of disbelief and unreality…We ran for a few hundred yards as if to shake off the weird feeling"

"I experienced an overwhelming feeling of sadness and depression in Kersey, but also a feeling of unfriendliness and unseen watchers which sent shivers up one’s back…"

Source http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-three-british-boys-traveled-to-medieval-england-or-did-they-35698485/#ixzz2uL2o9SJh

1979: France -

"Despite the oddities, the couples enjoyed themselves"

http://timeslipaccounts.blogspot.co.uk/2009_04_01_archive.html

1970s, Penrith, Cumbria, England:

"As Angela and her friend climbed, they chatted away, but the atmosphere grew increasingly heavy; as if there was thunder in the air…there was a very uncanny feeling about the place."

1988: Leeds, England.

"it seemed very gray and eerie."

http://timeslipaccounts.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/one-thing-leeds-to-another.html

But:

1968: Tunbridge Wells, Kent - England

"There was at the time, she thought, nothing especially odd about the scene."

1935: Minster, Thanet, Kent

"Remarkably, Dr Moon seems not at the time to have been either alarmed or even mildly surprised by the changed scenery, by the quite oddly dressed man approaching his or the fact that his car was missing."

Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20071007052922/http://www.historic-kent.co.uk/haunt13.html

Timeslip Accounts

A Timeslip from Kent:

On the morning of 18th June1968, and elderly lady, Mrs Charlotte Warburton, went shopping with her husband in the town. They decided to go their separate ways for a while and to meet up later. That morning, unable for find a particular brand of coffee from her usual grocer she went into a supermarket in Calverley Road. As she entered the shop she saw a small café through an entrance in the left-hand wall. She had never before realised that there was a café there. It was rather old-fashioned with wood panelled walls. There were no windows and the room was lit by a number of electric bulbs with frosted shades

There was at the time, she thought, nothing especially odd about the scene. 'Two woman in rather long dresses were sitting at one table and about half a dozen men, all in dark lounge suits, were sitting at the other tables further back in the room,' she said. 'All the people seemed to be drinking coffee and chatting ... a normal sight for a country town at eleven o'clock in the morning.'

Mrs Warburton did not stay but she certainly did not recognise anything amiss either then or indeed for several days. Even the rather formal and slightly off-key clothing made no immediate impression on her. Nor did the fact that although the customers were talking there was no noise from them to cause her to question her senses. Nor did she notice that there was no smell of coffee.

There is clearly something strange here. Yet without questioning the circumstances in which she found herself, Mrs Warburton blithely left the café and went to meet her husband. And she did not suggest to him that the scene at the café seemed in any was odd.

When they came to Tunbridge Wells on their next shopping expedition Mrs Warburton decided to take her husband to the café. Or rather, she hoped to take his there. But, of course, they never did find the place though they searched the street up and down. No, they were told in the supermarket, there was no café there. She must be in the wrong building. It was then that they learned about the Kosmos Kinema which had stood on the site of the supermarket. They were directed to the Tunbridge Wells Constitutional Club, where the steward told them that at one time the Constitutional Club had owned the premises adjoining the Kosmos, which was now incorporated into the supermarket. The club had had an assembly room in those days and to the rear a small bar with tables for refreshments. Mrs Warburton's description tallied exactly with the club's old refreshment room.

The bar, the cinema and the assembly room had all vanished years ago, Mrs Warburton was told. Yet, on 18th June 1968, she had stepped into the past and like others involved in time-slips had accepted without question, the place in which she found herself. Retrospective clairvoyance, it is called. Whatever it is, it is mighty odd to contemplate.

Read more here: http://web.archive.org/web/20071007052922/http://www.historic-kent.co.uk/haunt13.html

And one from South West England by Terry Cox:

In August 1941 two young sisters, aged twenty and eighteen, got off a bus at St. Mary Road [pseudonym] in order to walk along the very familiar road to Upper St. Mary [pseudonym] where a dance was being held in the village. It was 6.20pm when they set off along a road which they had cycled along many times. It was a pleasant summer evening, and they were anticipating an enjoyable night out with friends. They were country girls used to walking distances even at night and kept up a brisk pace. Ahead of them lay Home Farm [pseudonym], and they could hear the barking of the rather nasty farm dogs they usually outran on their bicycles at other times. It was then they made the fateful decision that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. They would leave the road at this point, circle round the farm inside the hedge, and rejoin the road beyond the farm and the noisy, threatening dogs. They estimated the time as being about 6.40pm as they walked past a hayrick in the first grass field, entered the second, green field, and headed back to the hedge to rejoin the road. They climbed what they thought was the hedge by the road and dropped down .... into a ploughed field. It is at this point that what I like to refer to as the 'Brigadoon factor' set in. Both sisters agree that, although it was about 6.45pm on a late summer's evening, from the moment they dropped down into the ploughed field it appeared to be dark. Except that there was a very large red moon which, totally out of character for a harvest moon, both dazzled them and threw long, dark shadows from trees and hedges. They both felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding or evil as they climbed hedge after hedge, always dropping down into ploughed fields with no gateways. They were always aware of the position of the road because they could see the tall trees of Home Farm and hear the dogs still barking - also the very occasional vehicle went past (there were few privately owned vehicles in 1941). Eventually they found a gap in the hedge and found themselves on marshy ground where they could hear a stream, but could not see it for the alder trees growing along the bank. Importantly, as we shall see later, they insist they did not cross it. They headed back through the gap in the hedge and saw a previously unnoticed gate. In the hedge near the gate was a tall white pillar or stone, unusual for these parts where grey granite is the norm. Equally unusual and frightening was the loud squeaking noise that was coming from the pillar at regular short intervals. Remember, these were country girls. As they insist, they were used to animal and bird noises at night, and used to lonely country roads. In their own words,'we were not town girls lost and scared in the countryside'. Taking the plunge, they dashed past the white pillar and threw themselves over the gate into the unknown road. Read more here: http://www.assap.ac.uk/newsite/articles/Time%20slip.html

The Adventure - did 2 Englishwomen walk back into 1792?

The Adventure: check it out here

This book was originally published in 1910 and represents the accounts and research of two English women who had an experience of some kind of 'timeslip' in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles outside Paris on August 10th 1901. They apparently walked through the gardens as they were on August 10th 1792, the day the French monarchy fell during the French Revolution. They wrote a book about this called The Adventure though the incident is also known as The Ghosts of the Petit Trianon.

This account is remarkable for its detail of the accounts of the two women and the efforts they went to establish the historical evidence for their belief that they had strayed into the past. They wrote the book under pseudonyms - Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont - though their actual names were Charlotte Moberly (1846-1937) and Eleanor Jourdain (1863-1924). Moberly's father was headmaster at the prestigious Winchester School and later Bishop of Salisbury. In her account she distances herself from a belief in ghosts and the occult (an epidemic of Spiritualism was sweeping Britain and America at that time). Jourdain's father was a vicar of the Church of England. 

Moberly was principal of a hall of residence for women at Oxford University and Jourdain was to be appointed as her assistant. Jourdain at that time was working as a tutor in Paris and Moberly went to visit her there to get to know her better before she took up the job.

As their accounts show, their visit to Versailles on 10th August 1901 was one of a number of tourist trips they went on while Moberly was visiting Jourdain in Paris.

They wrote separate accounts of their visit three months later in Oxford.

Interestingly, subsequent to The Adventure, Moberly had claimed to see ghost of the Roman Emperor, Constantine in the Louvre in Paris in 1914. Jourdain later became principal of St Hugh's at Oxford and there is a report of almost delusional thought when she became convinced that a German spy was hiding in the college. Later, her management style caused mass resignations at the college and in the middle of this scandal, in 1924, she suddenly died.

In 1931, J W Dunne, the author of An Experiment With Time  wrote the introduction to a new edition of The Adventure and he said,

"Hence, if Einstein is right, the contents of time are just as `real’ as the contents of space. Marie Antoinette– body and brain–is sitting in the Trianon garden now."

You will see that Moberly's theory is that somehow they were viewing the memories of Marie Antoinette from 10th August 1792, not that they had stumbled into the past. To my mind, the idea of a timeslip seems more plausible than reliving a dead person's memories. I know this is still a pretty controversial view, but I would base it on Dunne's quote above and evidence from other timeslip type experiences which I will discuss after the text of The Adventure.

However, there are problems too with the timeslip explanation.  Moberly makes much of the anniversary - that it was 10th August when they saw these visions and 10th August was the day of the downfall of French Monarchy (though Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were not executed for many months). But we see that on 10th August, 1792, the King and Marie Antoinette were at the Tuileries in central Paris when it was assailed by revolutionaries - not at Versailles. After leaving the Tuileries for their own safety, they then retreated to the National Assembly. After a deliberation the Assembly locked them in the small reporters' box called the logographe. At the end of that day Marie Antoinette was imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple.

Imbert de Saint-Amand gives a detailed account of that day in his Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty (trans. Elizabeth Gilbert Martin)

Also the Count de Vaudreuil was not present in Versailles on 10th August 1792 as he had left France in 1789 after the storming of the Bastille. I suppose this is why Moberly does not feel she walked into the past as it was on 10th August but into the memories of Marie Antoinette as she remembered Versailles from her confined prison in the logographe at the National Assembly. She discusses these points in the chapter Answers to Questions We Have Been Asked.

Get the full book here

15p?

So for each book that I sell in the US for 99 cents. Amazon withholds 30% tax, then there is a conversion to British pounds and I make 15p. It's gonna take of books to make my fortune...

It's a numbers game - or is it...?

A long time ago when I used to organise events for a sort of living, we put on a Rum Festival at Whitehaven. We got free rum from lots of rummeries (is this a word?) from all over the world and offered it to the public. We did other things such as organise a (fake) public hanging in 18th Century dress which made the front page as the local churches wanted to get us to stop it! Great publicity. And we had pirates on stilts and pirate dance bands and we released a cloud of parrots into the air (that isn't actually true, though the rest is). There were wigs and dandies galore too.

But the big attraction was the free rum. We had a tent where people doled out free tots of rum to a never ending queue. It was very popular with everyone but the police who had to deal with the effects of it. It was a really hot day and people were walking round in shorts and t-shirts. There were thousands of people on the streets and of course businesses did well.

I was talking to the owner of a local menswear shop and he said that he actually sold more full three piece suits that day than any other he could remember. It was no weather to be wearing a suit, so the message I took away was that it's a numbers game. The more people who see what you're selling, the more people will buy it. It's just stochastic like.

I guess your product should avoid being shit too.

But, today 20th Feb I've sold 102 books...

Feels ok even if it's not quite sufficient to retire to Whitehaven.

Mash Ups

When is a Public Domain Book not a Public Domain Book?

There is a book called The Adventure by Miss Moberly which details a timeslip at Versailles at the beginning of the 20th Century. I became aware of this book years ago when I was teaching nightclasses on ghosts and the paranormal. It is a classic and available at Archive.org.

There are also a couple of version on Kindle. One at least has a decent cover. The problem with The Adventure is that Moberly uses footnotes extensively and also uses a lot of French in sometimes long passages which she doesn't bother translate. The OCR has totally butchered the text with the footnotes being incorporated into the main text rendering it nearly unreadable. Also the French, though it has copied pretty well has been stripped of its accents and diacritic marks, so that it really isn't French at all.

I had thought I would clean up the text, restore the footnotes and re-do the French. I thought I'd also translate the French for the benefit of those who don't speak it.

The footnotes are of two types - extra commentaries and references to other books. I thought I would remove them altogether by using modern Harvard style referencing rather than footnotes and just incorporating the extra commentary in-text.

Further than that I wanted to add an introduction and link it to subsequent reports of timeslips such as Dunnichen Hill and Broad Street, Liverpool as well as some told to me directly by my students over the years. I have a nice one from Pembroke Castle for example.

When I've done all this - is this still public domain, or is the work my copyright?

Here's a link to US copyright law summarised by Project Gutenburg.

And there's a nice summary of the UK position by Tony Laidig (no relation) here, which is more complex than the US position.

Given that roughly the law is that 70 years after an author's death the works pass to the public domain, here's a list of the date of death of authors...

List of Authors by Year of Death at KingKong.

Like who would? But I'm glad they did.

A Difficult Start

So, I've sold 78 books so far this month and we have about half of it left. That's good. As for free downloads they are in the 100s. I read +Joe Konrath 's blog and it is inspirational.

But chicken and egg. If people haven't heard from you it's difficult to connect with them - or make them want to connect with you. And without that base of people who are interested, how do you get the word out in the first place?

Seems the answer is slow. I was reading in +Brenna Aubrey  's blog that she gave out lots of Advance Reader Copies before publication and this worked so well that she sold 9,129 books in December. That's the sort of figure to knock your block off.

How's that done? Probably by writing something pretty good that people want to read and then knowing how to market it. I have nothing wise to say about this, except that it feels a long way off.

Smashwords Update

So I mastered the template. All good. Haven't got the hang of the cover yet as no matter how big an image I use, it doesn't like it. I am going to have to get a a professional cover designer involved. But, the books don't sell in the numbers that justifies a cover costing $300. A conundrum As we sit here now, I have "sold" about 230 copies of a novel on Smashwords. That's in about 48 hours. Fantastic! I let the reader set the price, so they pay me what they think is fair. Weirdly 230 of them have all decided on the same price! Yep, you guessed it - they all thought my work was worth $0. All of them set the price as zero! You would have thought there would be one kind soul who thought it was worth a dime, but not so far.

Reader Set Price

Ok, this is a cool feature of the Smashwords Store - the Reader Sets Price.

It's pretty much the same as a free promotion - the books fly out and most people set the price as 'free'. Who knew?  But some kind souls, or people who value what you wrote, don't set it as free!

This is my excitement for the day. Now back to writing.

Visibility

When I was at school, which is some time ago now, there were only a few bands you could listen to. I would say that all the bands that anyone listened to - that were on the radio, that were in your record store, that your friends, and even your enemies listened to or went to see was less than 200.

That included every genre, every style. So, amongst those 200 some got to be very big. They had all the focus and all the visibility.

But what happens now is that there are thousands if not tens of thousands of bands. Some of them are pretty good. You'd really like some of them a lot, if you could only find them. The music industry is now fragmented and diffuse. There are some big names up there still of course which have huge marketing machines behind them, but increasingly good musicians are playing to smaller audiences.

It strikes me that the same thing is happening with authors. There are hundreds and thousands of authors publishing their books and ebooks now.  Most of those are never ever going to be professionally reviewed. Unless they break out and sell millions like John Locke or Amanda Hocking that is.

So, even if you have a good book, you are going to struggle to be visible. And by the old statistical bell curve of normal distribution, some books are going to suck, a lot of books are going to be ok, and some books are going to be brilliant. But how to tell?

John Locke says that his books are ok. I read one recently and it was absolutely that in my humble opinion. I'm not saying I can write better - I certainly can't sell better.

But we like to think that our work would succeed on merit - that if it was a wonderful piece of writing then it would rise to the top of the pile.

There are two questions I have here:

1) Would it though? Even if wonderful, does the huge ocean of other books drown it out?
2) Is our writing really that good? It might be ok, but the critical acclaim (I'm not talking about 2-3 positive reviews) is still not there. Maybe because it just moderately blows. And even if it doesn't blow, maybe it just doesn't shine.

Only time will tell (this is my favourite saying at the moment).

Sales so far

38 books sold up to 12th February. I don't think that's bad for a beginner.

Smashwords

I've spent pretty much all night trying to format a manuscript for uploading to Smashwords. I would say "in the end" - but it wasn't the end at all - I downloaded the template manuscript and I spent a long time following it, to what I thought was the letter. However, I still have autovetter errors.

The trouble is, it tells you that you have them, but it doesn't tell you what they are. Or at least as far as I can figure out. So I now need to go through the whole manuscript and guess what Smashword's Autovetter thinks is wrong.

I see from trawling the internet on this subject that I am not alone.

Still, going through the Youtube tutorials, reading the style guide and ploughing through the template have made me a better person.

But, it will make me give up on trying to publish on Smashwords unless someone can convince me it's worth the crazy effort of trying to second guess what their autovetter thinks is wrong.

Reviews by Family

My girlfriend bought and read one of my books to be supportive, but she actually liked it. So she went on Amazon, again to be supportive and left a 4 star review and what I thought (though I am biased) was pretty accurate and her own opinion.  But Amazon seemed to have pulled this review...

I feel hurt. I don't think they're being fair. However you don't want to upset the big Amazon bear by poking it, or it might just swipe you out of existence.

Anyone else have any views on this?

Coming Clean about Dirty Stories

I don't read erotica. I've never bought a Kindle erotica book, so I don't know much about the genre. But I read that people are making money from writing this stuff.

So I thought I'd give it a try. I did some research. I figured that men don't buy books of any kind to get off; they'd rather watch a video or look at some pictures. I'm listening to a podcast about this as I type as it's making me laugh.

So this guy in the podcast is saying, "Amazon does not allow bestiality erotica, but you can have bigfoot" (bigfeet?). And my nerd mind gets involved with issues of cryptozoology. What is bigfoot then? Is he an animal or a man? You can also have werewolf erotica. But I would have thought that when the man turns into the wolf, he's an animal, ergo... bestiality. Whatever. I've stopped laughing now.

I thought I'd better be a woman to write this stuff and I certainly didn't want it associated with my name in case my kids read it! So I created a persona. I had such fun doing it. I made up her life story, I researched where she'd gone to school. I realise as I write this that I'm going to get into such trouble if anyone finds out. Especially the ex-gf whose photo I used. I want to come back to the ethics of this (it's at least mildly unethical)

So, I created a gmail account for her; a facebook page a tumblr account and guess what, soon she's getting friend requests from people who think they were at school with her.

But I like her persona. She's kind of become like my friend.

But coming back to the dirty stories. I like writing the setting and building the scene; writing the dialogue etc, but the rumpy-pumpy - the actual accounts of the deed, the act, the acts, is pretty repetitive. And also because Americans might read it, there is the issue of what is a fanny. It can get awkward.

Also I kind of feel dirty writing it.

So here I am pursuing money and prostituting my art. I don't have an issue with writing as a product. I'm producing a product for people to buy just like the bards and the silver poets and the copywriters did and do.

But it's not selling not for me. And I guess that maybe because my heart's not in it. When I have downloaded free samples of other erotica I'm generally not impressed with the writing. I think mine's better. There are some exceptions to the poor quality. Generally those that show some kind of wit and humour. There was a great one that started: "Eight inches. I want eight inches or nothing."  It's like me when I went to the hardware store to get some 2 by 4. When you need wood, it's got to be exactly the right size.

Or my erotiks could not be selling because they is shit?

Only time will tell brothers.